Diminishing MF returns

[Todd]

This page contains some numbers from 1.09 describing the diminishing effects of increasing MF for the various item qualities. Is it still accurate in 1.10, or have changes been made? And obviously, if they've changed, are the newer numbers available somewhere?

[Thrugg]

The diminishing returns have not been altered. That page is equally inaccurate now as it was for 1.09 :)

To be fair, it is not exactly inaccurate, but its numbers are misleading to most people.
Suppose you are wearing a Goldwrap (30% MF) on an otherwise naked char. You probably consider yourself as having 30% MF.
However, you are actually 130% (ie 1.3 times) more likely to find magic items as you are naked. Whether your "MF value" includes this inherent 100% chance you have to begin with is confusing for a lot of people. I have seen questions asked as if it was some native bonus your char starts with, and whether all classes get the same... :blink:

Anyway, the numbers listed on that page are in "100+x" form. ie, if you are wearing 100% MF from various sources, you need to look at the 200% row, which says you have a 171% chance of finding uniques. This means a 1.71 times better chance, not 171% additional chance (which would be 2.71 times the chance).

If you prefer the chart in more familiar terms, you could drop the 0 row and just subtract 100 from everything (including the actual MF column) to get numbers in terms of "additional MF".

OK, I almost always confuse people when I try to explain this, how'd I do this time?

[adeyke]

This calculator can let you calculate the diminishing returns without the whole "add 100, look up value, subtract 100" thing. The diminishing returns calculator there should be accurate, though the actual drop calculator isn't.

[Todd]

I understand. The page is not really clear about whether the results are additional drops or a frequency relative to the base drops. Since the latter is correct, the +100% thing makes sense - the result 0% means *no* unique drops at all, which means that the 100% row is really the baseline.

The upshot of this, as I see it, is that more MF becomes relatively pointless much earlier than people think. It's pretty simple, for most characters, to equip 150% MF in gear (which corresponds to 250% MF in the chart). Equipping 400% MF gear (difficult for many character without using lots of 7% charms) gives only a roughly 25% relative bonus in uniques (from 1.93 to 2.53). Going from there to 600% MF gear, requiring serious charms and/or crazy Isted gear, gets you almost no relative increase in drops. INteresting.

Thanks for the clarifications.